


Casting Out

by Garonne



Category: Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2016-12-11
Packaged: 2018-09-07 22:25:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8818519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Garonne/pseuds/Garonne
Summary: "I suppose the men have already approached you, Stephen?" Jack said with an excess of casualness. "About the idea of an exorcism?"





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the perfect-duet Advent Calendar on livejournal. It's not very Christmassy, though. The original prompts (exorcism and demon) were actually from the Halloween livejournal comm Spook Me. As you see, I'm a rather slow writer... 
> 
> Thank you to all the LJ comm mods concerned! :)
> 
> I've been deliberately vague about which of their voyages this takes place on, and all the other officers and men are made up by me, not taken from the books.

.. .. ..

After the funeral, Stephen retreated to his sickberth to sit with his patients: one broken leg, one recovering hernia, and the unfortunate Andrew Andrews. He still had an hour before the Captain's visit, but the unease that filled the ship had grown to such a pitch that he sought escape. The dim, stuffy solitude of the sickbay was better than a breath of fresh air in that respect.

Jack arrived promptly at eight bells in the afternoon watch. He had put off his best uniform, donned for the funeral, but his face retained something of the solemnity of the occasion.

Stephen laid aside Adanson's 'Familles des plantes' and rose to his feet. He had intended to start with the two injured men dozing in the far corner of the sickbay, but he could not help noticing the uneasy glances Jack kept casting at Andrew Andrews, who at this moment was sleeping peacefully. 

"What ails you, Jack?" Stephen said in an undertone, since they were not alone. "Sure you don't share the men's superstitions, I hope?"

He shot a fierce look at Jack's hands to make sure he was not crossing his fingers or any such nonsense.

Jack frowned at him.

"This damned business with Reliable Johnson has set the crew all on end," he said instead of answering -- Johnson being the man who had inexplicably plunged to his death from the yardarm this morning, an experienced seaman, perfectly sober, in a sea as flat as a village pond. "And then there are all the... other incidents."

Stephen had heard the catalogue many times already. Ship's monkey found dead, pinned by a falling marlinspike, an incredibly unlucky accident -- the entire larboard mess poisoned by a cask of bad beef -- numerous minor mishaps and injuries -- and worst of all, the ship becalmed for almost a month now, and water running low. He was firmly of the opinion that this last circumstance was the true root of the crew's unease: with the empty ocean around them, no land or ship within a thousand miles, they had only their imaginations to occupy their minds. 

He returned Jack's frown. "And what have these incidents to do with Andrew Andrews, pray?"

"The man has fits and speaks in tongues," said Jack, in a voice that made plain he thought he was speaking very reasonably. "In Latin, no less. You cannot blame the men for being uneasy."

"It is not Latin but Sardinian."

In the muster-roll Andrews' birthplace was given as London, England, but anyone who had ever heard his broken English knew the birthplace, like his name, must have been bestowed on him by some receiving ship's purser.

At that very moment, Andrew Andrews began to toss and to mutter, and then to speak aloud. He was a middle-aged man, almost completely bald, and gaunt by nature. He had been ill so long that his cheeks were sunken and his eyes deeply shadowed, giving his face the appearance of a skull in the lantern-light. His deep voice filled the stuffy, dark sickbay. The loblolly boy crossed himself, and the two other patients shifted uneasily in their cots and turned their heads away.

"What is he saying?" Jack asked. 

Stephen hesitated. The man's delirious mutterings meandered through the realms of death and destruction, dwelling particularly on his heavy sense of his own mortality. Stephen would much rather have been able to say prize money or a childhood sweetheart.

"The Sardinian tongue is very far removed from Catalan, Italian and the like," he said evasively, not to mention mendaciously. "Now won't you come look at my reduced hernia, Jack? That is why you are here, now, surely."

The two other patients were well on their way to mending, and Stephen was determined to send them away as soon as physically possible. They would regain their strength much more quickly among their messmates, than in the company of a man they believed to be possessed by the devil.

Jack spoke with the men for a few minutes, with always the accompaniment of Andrews in the background, the man's voice now rising to a shriek, now falling to a low ominous muttering.

.. .. ..

Later that evening, Stephen supped in the great cabin. They had toasted cheese and cold mutton chops, accompanied by Jack's speculation on the probable success of his new iron-strapped quarter-blocks. He hoped they would prove their worth as soon as ever this damned wind should feel fit to blow again. 

Stephen listened with less than half an ear, pondering on the disappointing lack of Glaucus atlanticus in these waters. When the ship first became becalmed, he had immediately demanded the use of a small boat, to row around the ship and collect samples at water-level. And yet nary a sea-slug had he seen in the past three weeks, blue or otherwise; and this despite Forster's claims that they were to be found in abundance in these latitudes, floating on the sea surface. He was just about to make a remark to that effect, when he heard Jack mention the name Andrews. 

"I suppose the men have already approached you?" Jack said with an excess of casualness. "About the idea of an -- exorcism?"

"Exorcism, forsooth," Stephen said crossly.

He had already overheard or been directly confronted with all the arguments: Andrews was the Doctor's patient, after all -- the Doctor spoke Latin like it was English -- everyone knew Papists were better at exorcisms.

"I don't suppose you would consider it?" Jack said now. "Just to set the men's minds at rest. Any man can perform an exorcism, Wosley tells me. It don't take a priest."

Stephen did not think Jack really believed that Andrews was demon-possessed. Nor did Jack normally set much store by religious ceremonies, of any stripe. But Jack Aubrey was a deeply superstitious man, and this was something in the nature of throwing salt over his shoulder. And more importantly, it would have an incalculable effect on the crew's morale.

Yet Stephen was seized with a sudden contrariety. He fixed Jack with his most reptilian stare.

"Firstly, an exorcism is not a thing to be undertaken lightly; secondly, I have not the slightest idea how it goes in the Roman Rite; thirdly and most importantly, the man is not possessed."

None of these arguments bore very much weight with Jack. 

"It wouldn't have to be the -- the Roman Rite, precisely," he said, stumbling over the unfamiliar phrase. "Any bit of chapter and verse on the casting out of demons would do the trick. Lord knows there's plenty of it in there." He wished to follow this up with an example to prove it, but his education had accorded more time to Moore's New Practical Navigator than the Bible. His mind groped for a suitable verse and fixed on the word legion. This threw him into confusion, making him think of Army legions, and he ran aground. "Our Lord was forever casting out demons," he finished lamely. "I remember it distinctly."

"And why can not you perform this casting out? Are you not vested with the authority of God and the King upon this vessel?"

Jack could not deny it, but neither could he explain the vague feeling there was something Papishly ritualistic in the ceremony, unsuited to the office of Captain.

"You laid the ghost in the bowsprit netting," he pointed out. "A few splashes of holy water and the thing was done, nothing easier."

"I might be persuaded to a few splashes of holy water in this case," Stephen said cautiously. 

Their conversation was interrupted at this point by a sudden hullabaloo on deck, cries of alarm coming down through the open hatches. Jack shot to his feet and out of the cabin, Stephen close on his heels. Mr Patterson, out of breath, met them on the aft companionway.

"Accident," he gasped. "Nasty accident on the forecastle."

There was no moon that night, and the scene they found when they came on deck was lit only by the yellow gleam of the deck lanterns. A crowd had gathered before the foremast, and on the deck between them lay a spread-eagled body.

Stephen pushed through the gawkers and fell to his knees beside the man. It was Josiah Collins, quartermaster's mate, bleeding heavily from an open wound in the region of the supraorbital artery. He was unconscious, but in the darkness Stephen could make out little else.

He looked up into the circle of white, shocked faces gathered close around him.

"Stand back," he cried angrily. "I cannot see."

The cry went up, "A lantern there, a lantern for the doctor," and soon Stephen had enough light to see that the wound was deep, right to the bone, but that the skull was essentially untouched. The blood loss was considerable, and he quickly fashioned a temporary dressing with handkerchiefs and clean sailcloth supplied by willing hands.

On the deck nearby lay one of those canvas-covered wooden bars Stephen was used to seeing in the rigging. Its sharp corner was stained with blood.

"Futtock-staff just fell on him," the voice of a witness piped up from the crowd. "Fell from the fore-topmast. Like a judgement from Heaven."

At this, a babble of voices ended the shocked silence. The bosun's strong "Silence, fore and aft" rang out.

"He must be carried below," said Stephen, straightening up. "And pass the word for Mr McBride."

His assistant was waiting for them in the sickberth, instruments laid out. In the end there was very little they could do, beyond cleaning and dressing the wound, and dosing the poor man with laudanum to keep him quiet. 

"It is certainly not as bad as it looks," Stephen said in Latin to McBride. "The skull is intact, and that is the main thing."

"But think of the possibility of cerebral contusions," said McBride, an inveterate pessimist. 

"Indeed, who can say what state his wits will be in, if and when he wakes. We must sit with him tonight." He rinsed the blood from his hands, then added in a somewhat louder voice and in English, for the benefit of everyone else in the sickberth, "Yet I am sure it is not as bad as it looks, and the essential thing now is rest and quiet."

For though he knew and liked Josiah Collins, he was equally concerned about the effect on the nervous crew of this fresh mishap.

He checked on his other patients -- Andrews was sleeping peacefully, for once -- and told McBride he would be back in four hours to relieve him. Then he made his way to the great cabin, where Jack was sitting frowning over accounts.

"How is he?" Jack cried upon Stephen's entry.

"Only time will tell, but I am fairly hopeful."

"May I see him?"

"In the morning. For the moment, I have dosed him, and I hope he will sleep through the night. That is the best physic he can possibly have."

He noted wearily that Jack had finished the toasted cheese, and shook his head at the offer of the last mutton chop.

"I thank you, Jack, but I believe I must turn in. Goodnight to you now."

Once in his cabin, however, sleep would not come. His mind turned on other similar injuries he had seen in his time -- the likely effect of this unfortunate accident on the crew -- Andrew Andrews' case, so far resistant to physic -- an exorcism he had seen once as a child, through a crack in the door, and the general impression of confusion and suffocating fear that had filled the room.

He heard two bells in the middle watch, and realized he had been lying awake for over an hour. He had dosed Collins with laudanum but refused to do so for himself. That was an old enemy, vanquished for the moment. He sent his thoughts down other paths: what Hawthorne had to say about epilepsy -- the inefficacy of bromide, one of the first things he had given Andrews -- other possible causes for seizures. 

Presently he reflected that if he were awake then McBride might as well be asleep. He rose, dressed, made his way to the sickberth, and stopped short. 

There were more men in the tiny crowded space than he had ever seen outside a battle. They were clustered around Andrew Andrews' corner. His arrival provoked a minor hullabaloo, as men fled in all directions. Within second only an unfortunate few slowpokes were left, standing huddled together between the cots, staring dumbly at Stephen. 

The loblolly boy was sitting on his usual perch in the corner, and Stephen's gaze latched on to the Bible ineptly concealed beneath his feet. Andrew Andrews himself was wide awake, his eyes wide and terrified, his face sheened with sweat. His arms and feet were expertly lashed to his cot.

Stephen considered the scene in silence for a moment. His first thought was that it was fortunate Jack was not with him. His second thought was that man was a strange, superstitious creature. 

"Where is Mr McBride?" he demanded. 

It appeared they had lured him away.

He considered asking whose clever idea this exorcism had been, but he had no doubt the ringleaders had been among the first to take flight. A dismal clucking drew his attention to the chicken wandering about under the cots -- one of the ship's last remaining pieces of livestock. 

"And so this poor creature was to take the place of the swine," he cried. "I see there is a Biblical scholar among you."

They hung their heads and shuffled their feet.

Stephen turned to the loblolly boy. "Cut him free."

The man crept forward, his entire body fairly radiating his best impression of innocence, and complete ignorance of the night's events. He cut Andrews' bonds with a catlin, and then stood there awkwardly, looking everywhere but at Andrews.

Stephen checked that his patient had come to no harm -- no physical harm, at least. Yet the fact remained that a large number of the men had been somewhere they had no business to be, and up to no good. He considered for a moment whether to involve the officer of the watch, but it was not in his nature to do so.

He turned on the few remaining men in the room, and cried at them in his harshest voice, "Begone, you ignorant wretches." 

They scattered in alarm. Stephen stood there for a moment, glaring after them. Then he sighed inwardly, and turned to check on Josiah Collins

McBride appeared a few minutes later.

"Doctor!" he cried, surprised. "Is it already the hour?" He drew his watch from his pocket. "I was called to the quarterdeck -- some misunderstanding."

Stephen reassured him he was not late at all.

"But at least I can bring good news with me from above-decks," McBride added. "The wind has picked up again, this past half hour or more."

Now that it had been pointed out to him, even Stephen could feel the change in the ship's motion, and her steadily increasing speed. 

He sent McBride off to bed. Less than half an hour later, he heard the call "Sail ahoy," echoed several times. 

He was unsurprised when, shortly afterwards, "Beat to quarters" sounded throughout the ship.

"Not a day too soon," he said to Andrew Andrews, who had already lapsed back into unconsciousness. "You may not be cured, my friend, but I think I can safely say your persecution is at an end."

"Beg pardon, sir?" said the loblolly boy, who was still waiting anxiously for the blow of punishment to fall.

"I said, lay out my instruments," said Stephen, with grim satisfaction.


End file.
